BACKGROUND The prolonged use or abuse of voice may lead to vocal fatigue and vocal fold tissue damage. School teachers routinely use their voices intensively at work and are therefore at a higher risk of dysphonia. AIMS To determine the prevalence of voice disorders among primary school teachers in Lagos, Nigeria, and to explore associated risk factors. METHODS Teaching and non-teaching sta...

In this paper we present a new method for voice disorders classification based on multilayer neural network. The processing algorithm is based on a hybrid technique which uses the wavelets energy coefficients as input of the multilayer neural network. The training step uses a speech database of several pathological and normal voices collected from the national hospital “Rabta Tunis” and was con...

It is well recognized that many psychiatric disorders and illnesses present with acoustic markers that manifest in the speech of the affected people. Studies continue to uncover positive relationships between the human voice and a widening range of mental conditions. There is not much literature, however, on the use of voice in the grading of psychiatric illnesses. Here the term grading refers ...

Background: Speech disorders are a feature of Parkinson’s disease, typically worsening as the disease progresses. The Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT) was developed to address these difficulties. It targets vocal loudness as a means of increasing vocal effort and improving co-ordination across the subsystems of speech. Aims: Currently LSVT is not widely available, and there are practical di...

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Patient adherence to voice therapy presents a problem in voice treatment. Although voice therapy has demonstrated efficacy for a variety of disorders, it is limited by poor patient adherence to practice and generalization of a target voice technique between sessions and high drop-out dates. Typically, patients can produce this target technique with therapist assistance during their treatment se...

UNLABELLED Dysphonia may impair the quality of communication and social relations of people, thereby directly affecting quality of life. It is common knowledge amongst professionals involved with the treatment of voice disorders the need for objective protocols to evaluate voice quality and measure its impact on the individual's quality of life. AIM To associate life quality with the degree o...